Being new to this map making hobby There's some excellent tutorials here that I've started and also been fiddling about with various bit of software just getting to know what they can and cannot do. The main criteria is that theyíre free as spare cash is not something I have a lot of.

Iím thinking "what style of maps I want to make first?" but looking on this forum I see so many different styles that appeal. Where to start?

Iím not GMing at the moment now so thereís time to do some pro-active work on my world. Thereís lots of locations from my setting but Iím looking for a game world to slot everything in itís place. Having started creating my world in a bottom up sort of way I think a bit of top down is needed. I hope you get what I mean. So onwards.

The plan is to create world map overview and then zoom in to various parts and flesh out some more. RobA has some cool tips on doing that but I was looking for another way to try to keep terrain details as well (I'm lazy!). From a tip from Torq I looked at Terranoise (http://www.guruware.at/main/terraNoise/index.html (http://www.guruware.at/main/terraNoise/index.html)) which was cool but it mentioned it was based on Libnoise. So I looked at Libnoise (http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/examples/complexplanet/index.html (http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/examples/complexplanet/index.html)) and thought I'd investigate.

So here is an example of zooming with Libnoise. I just zoom into the centre of the pics. I'm still figuring out all the inner workings but as a (very early) WIP what do you think?

Planet
2197

Zooms
2198
2199
2200
2201

Obviously the zoomed in areas would just be the base of the maps with lots more details added.
I'm not too sure about the mountains style. I think they need to look a bit more 'ridged' - needs more tweaking.
Anyone got any experience with Libnoise? Or other (free) software that does this?

Also I'm not sure what the policy is on posting pics (size, res, format, number) - any advice?

Well, thanks for looking.
Nic.

RobA

01-25-2008, 12:00 PM

Wow - that is quite nice!

Is this from GW:terragen, or did you code the C++ yourself? What dev environment are you using?

And yes, the best way to provide detail is to maintain he same fractal seed and keep increasing octaves as you zoom...

Also, I agree the mountains are a little too perlin and not enough ridged mf.

The pallette mapping is also nice, and I like the inclusion of coastal shelves. What did you render in?

-Rob A>

Nichothy

01-25-2008, 12:53 PM

Hi Rob,

I took the C++ source code from the Libnoise website and compiled in MS Visual C++ 2006 (free download). It's the 1st thing I've ever compiled so just working out how to compile the damned thing took a while.

I've been changing alot of the settings in the source code to better understand how Libnoise generates the final map and get it closer to how I want it to look. I'm trying to get the mountains more ridged mf.

These pics are from Libnoise itself. The compiled program generates these pics + a Terragen file, a raw terrain file, a bmp pic that is colored according to elevation only, a bmp pic containing the normals + a bmp pic containing the specularity map. I haven't really played around with these other generated files though. I find it amazing how a little 128 kb program can generate all this.

Cheers.

Redrobes

01-25-2008, 01:25 PM

Hey these shots look great for such a small program. Procedural terrain generation from noise can look good but it suffers as you get closer because your perception of what is normal becomes more familiar.

Mountains are a particular pain because your at the larger end of the familiarity (unless your an astronaut !). So you need valleys and a hydrodynamic system that works to let the water out. Its very difficult to generate that.

Monks has been using WorldMachine and GlobalMapper for doing this recently.

Here are some shots of some of the mountains he has created.
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/screenies/TheColdFells.png
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/screenies/WMZoom_04.png

There is a topic about this on the Terrain Summit.
http://terrain.cg-arts.org/forum/index.php?topic=24.msg920#msg920

Its unfortunate that the MeDem website is offline for a while so some of the links that reference that are duff.

If you do know of a way to get good looking 3D mountains out of some noise filters then do post or let me know.

Nichothy

01-25-2008, 05:20 PM

I agree, at the global level they look OK but zoomed in they do look too swirly. And I haven't even thought of the rivers / errosion / etc. :(( I feel I'm just scratching the surface of a very large topic.